United Linux is Here

pstreck writes "Red Hat watch out! Caldera, Conectiva, SuSE and Turbolinux have made good on their promise and United Linux is here! According to their website 'United Linux is a standards-based Linux operating system targeted at the business user. It is developed, marketed and sold by an experienced partnership of Linux companies.'" I just don't get it I guess, it just seems like there are already so many standards.

Comments

What are you guys? Idiots?

[Nevermine]

The reason why they would be creating a United Linux distribution would be to actually get rid of the many distributions and unite on one single distribution. I think this is an excellent idea to try to make the standards a bit fewer, and in the meantime create an allmighty one.

You slashdotters are all still really cynical to everything you ever hear about!

Re:LINUX sucks dogs balls on a hot summer's nite

[ciryon]

That has been discussed before and those statistics doesn't say anything. Take a look at the amount of packages with a Linux distribution and compare to the amount of programs you get with Winbloze. Is it strange that there are more 'vulnerabilities' in Linux? The same holes repeated over and over, but in different programs.

How many apps do you get in windows? Perhaps less than 50 including DOS utils and crap like Wordpad and Paint. In a normal Linux distro there are more than 2000 apps.

Ciryon

Re:This is a wonderful thing..

[goldspider]

"This gives everyone more competition."

You're absolutely right, more distributions does equal more competition. The problem though, is that these individual distributions are not competing with Microsoft. They are competing against each other.

Perhaps I'm oversimplifying here, but I believe this is a "together we stand, divided we fall" situation. No single distribution will be competetive with Microsoft as long as it has other linux variants to contend with as well.

This consolidation is a step in the right direction. I hope it doesn't turn into Just Another Distribution.

Re:This is a wonderful thing..

[Ngwenya]

I need stuff that helps me work faster, better and *simpler*. That is what Windows *does* have in its favor currently. Most things are just a few dialog boxes away and I'm done. I'm waiting for that in Linux and I hope with a decree that they are going after business that they will realize that business isn't interested in the arcane. They want simple, fast solutions to common tasks.

But dialog boxes != simple, fast solutions. Note - you didn't say that they were, but all too often this is taken as mantra. Sometimes, GUIs are the right thing to use. Sometimes, CLIs and editing of config files are the right things to do. Very often, GUIs which edit config files in the background enable you to split off level 1 tech support from deeper tech support.

What is true is that businesses generally want repeatable infrastructures. This often (but not always) requires a good degree of automation within business processes. I would maintain that both Windows and Linux have a ways to go on this front, but I'd place more money on Linux getting there, since the view of a stripped down internet appliance is (IMHO) easier to make under Linux.

The arcane is not the desirable, but computing systems are complex, multi-faceted entities. And abstracting away complexity by degrading how good a fit the systems are for your business is not a good strategy. Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.

A bit incoherent, this post, but it's my overtired rant against the belief that pointy-clicky interfaces are by definition better for businesses. Everyone needs to be trained how to use business equipment properly - whether its a fork lift or a computer.

--Ng